


Some Assembly Required (working title)

by Sunder_the_Gold



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunder_the_Gold/pseuds/Sunder_the_Gold
Summary: The Recall didn't fail, but certainly didn't inspire the grand response Winston desired. Aside from Tracer, the former agents of Overwatch refused the call, each for their own reasons.But now, Winston has received a summons of his own, from one of those very agents. Torbjörn Lindholm has found something which shook his worldview to the core.Neither of them truly understand how one Bastion unit — the last Bastion unit in the world — will become the pivot on which everything turns.(Follows after the cinematic shorts "Recall", "The Last Bastion", "Honor and Glory" and the comic "Binary".)





	1. Chapter 1

Travelers in Gothenberg, Sweden were treated to a rare sight that day. Their most notorious resident was greeting Earth’s only talking gorilla.

“Winston!” the dwarfish Swede barked gladly, before his manner became fondly mocking. “Still using that feather-duster of a weapon? How’s that working out for you?”

The giant gorilla leaned forward aggressively, speaking in a warm voice with a dangerous undertone. “Why don’t you come over here and… ask that again?”

Their eyes remained locked for a moment before they broke into laughter and closed the distance between them.

Winston’s paw engulfed Torbjorn’s hand as they shook, and Torbjorn threw his other arm around Winston’s shoulder in a one-sided, lopsided hug. It was the comfortable balance they had found many years ago, for embracing each other enough to feel connection without Winston’s greater size overwhelming his diminutive mentor.

“Ay, it’s good to see you, Winston. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“I know how important this is to you, sir.”

The sound of an electronic hum sounded three times, and Tracer appeared in a flash of blue. “Torbjorn! You’re looking well!”

“Hello, Lena. Good to see you, too. The two of you have all yer luggage? Let’s get going.” 

* * *

“I can hardly believe it,” Tracer breathed, peeking furtively into Torbjorn’s garage. “You really have a Bastion unit. Here in your own home. Reading children’s books. Is that a bird? Did you really get it a pet bird?”

“The blasted bird came with it and won’t leave. The machine has a perverse fascination with little animals. If I don’t keep it distracted, it tries to leave the garage. I can’t very well let my neighbors know a Bastion is here, so I’ve got to feed the bird and put the Nature Channel on the television. Better it sing with the birdies like Snow White than remember it’s a killing machine.”

Winston nervously adjusted his glasses. “It isn’t still loaded, surely?”

“And how do you propose I pry its ammunition compartments open without provoking it? Judging by its weight, it’s spent a magazine of the gatling gun’s rounds somewhere, but none of the rifle’s or cannon’s.”

“It’s used the Sentry gun?! But you said…”

“I know what I said! There are still no reports of any injuries or fatalities in any of the instances where people reported running into the beast. None of those reports claimed that it ever assumed the Sentry configuration; it always ran away.”

“That’s why everyone dismissed the reports,” Winston mused. “No one’s ever heard of a Bastion running away.”

“I didn’t believe it, either,” Torbjorn admitted. “I only looked into it because the sightings came here, to Sweden, and I had nothing better to do.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t kill it,” Tracer said, mouth on autopilot as she tried to accept what her eyes were showing her. “I can’t believe you’re keeping it. I can’t believe it has a pet bird. I can’t believe it’s reading children’s learning books.”

“It was Ingrid’s idea,” the engineer said, proudly. “After I told her I was calling for your help in getting into the tin-can’s head, she fished up any of the old books we hadn’t given to our grandkids. A simple solution.”

Winston chuckled, and patted the laptop case he carried. “Quite, but Athena should help us speed things along.”

“So, she’s taking this well, then, Ingrid?” Tracer asked.

“I’ve been sleeping on the couch since I brought it back, but she’s relaxed since the first day.” 

* * *

Fortunately, introducing the new arrivals to the Omnic went swimmingly. It seemed more fascinated than frightened by them, curious that the non-human creature was wearing human clothes and making human noises and that the new human wore such a large machine on her chest.

Winston set up his laptop, attaching an extra monitor that he turned to face the watching Bastion.

“Okay, Athena. Ready to translate?”

“Go ahead, Winston.”

He turned to Torbjorn. “What do we ask first?”

“The most important thing: Has it ever killed anyone?”

“Define ‘anyone’,” Athena requested.

“Human beings!” Torbjorn snapped at the AI. The gorilla and Omnic-rights supporter in the room frowned, but held their peace. They knew he didn’t mean to exclude Winston, and they didn’t want to delay an opportunity for him to learn something about Omnics that might change his mind.

On the monitor facing the Bastion, Athena displayed the question in the animated character script of the Omnic language. The robot gave a pleasantly surprised chirp, but seemed to lose its cheer upon realizing the message. Its response was short and somber.

“It says it has not.”

“Has it ever  _harmed_  or  _attacked_  anyone?”

A longer, more furtive response.

“To the best of its knowledge, it has not inflicted damage upon a human being or other organic lifeform, though it cannot confirm so. It once spent an entire magazine of its rotary cannon to destroy what it believed at the time to be unseen enemy firing an automatic weapon, but did not confirm a kill. It destroyed many trees and scared the wildlife and its companion bird, but observed no corpses. Only later did it observe a species of bird which produced the gunfire-like sound by attacking a tree with its beak.”

“…A woodpecker?”

Athena showed the Bastion a picture of the bird.

“Yes.”

The former members of Overwatch collectively sat back, and one by one breathed a sigh of relief. Tracer was the first to giggle, which set off Winston, and the Bastion stared in confusion as Torbjorn joined them in a round of uproarious laughter.

Then it seemed to find the humor, and began mimicking their sounds and gestures.

They stopped, surprised, and it stopped. Then they all began laughing again. 

* * *

Winston held up some cables. “We want to wire this monitor up to your memory banks and review your experience logs.”

Athena translated the Bastion’s response. “The unit does not want to replay its earliest logs.”

“Why not?” Torbjorn demanded.

“More embarrassing bird stories?” Tracer joked.

Athena did not translate the Omnic’s immediate response; after a brief exchange, she stated, “The unit needed an explanation of the concept of ‘embarassment’. Rather, the issue is that it has decided that its earliest experiences are best forgotten. It judges them to be anomalous and detrimental; undesirable for making future judgments.”

“Intriguing,” Winston muttered.

“Oh, now I  _have_  to know!” Tracer added.

Torbjorn agreed. “We need to know the truth!”

But the Bastion was not so easily convinced. Athena relayed, “The unit believes reliving those experiences will unnecessarily raise its combat readiness level and introduce processing errors.”

Again, this only made the Overwatch agents more curious, even as they remembered their caution.

“We  _have_  to know,” Torbjorn insisted.

“The unit fears that it might accidentally harm you because of the influence of these memories."

“Bah! If you’re  _really_  so concerned about that, you could always hand over your ammunition."

“The unit is not willing to disarm. It believes enemies could be anywhere.”

“This is my  _home!_  I can’t take you anywhere safer!”

“The unit is tentatively willing to believe that, but is still concerned about harming you even without ammunition. It is worried that it might damage you through impulsive concussive impact. The unit judges human bodies to be exceedingly weak and fragile compared to its own.”

Winston said, “But  _I_  am not a human. Look here.” With one paw, he scooped up and lifted a massive tool as easily as the Bastion could with its own single hand. “If you empty out your guns, I’m not in immediate danger from you. I can shield my friends from you.”

The Bastion considered it.

“The unit accepts.”


	2. Chapter 2

From the moment I came online, I received the same message, over and over again.  
  
_Humans are the enemy. Destroy them._  
  
_Humans die easily. Be bold and destroy them._  
  
_Human weapons are dangerous. Be wary and destroy the humans first._  
  
_March. March. March._  
  
_Destroy the humans._  
  
So I marched. Together with my siblings. We marched out of the factory and aboard the air transports. We marched to our drop-pods. I stepped into my own, hunkering down for the journey.  
  
The message continued, over and over and over.  _Destroy. They are weak; be bold. They are dangerous; be wary. Destroy the enemy._  
  
Details were provided about the enemy. Basic human anatomy — where to shoot to confirm a kill. Rocket launchers. Battle rifles. Vehicles.  
  
The Crusaders.  
  
As we approached the battle, we received strategic updates. The numbers of the enemy destroyed. The ground gained. The reinforcements arriving.  
  
The growing number of our slain siblings.  
  
I felt so many things. Joy at our success. Sorrow for our fallen. Terror at the thought of my own demise. All of it swirling together into one all-consuming sentiment:  
  
Hatred for the enemy.  
  
At last, we arrived at our drop-off point. Inside the armored safety of my pod, I felt the dizzying, weightless sensation of freefall.  
  
Then nothing.

* * *

I woke to the sensation of something rapping on my head.  
  
Awareness slowly returned. My processor and body felt sluggish, stiff. Dirt and plantlife fell from me as I straightened and stood, but both seemed to reach deep inside me, gumming up my systems all the way to my most vital components. I wondered if my internals had become as green and brown as my hull.  
  
I didn't feel alarmed at my poor condition. The idea that I might have continued to rust until I died seemed purely hypothetical. I'd woken up, hadn't I? I was fine.  
  
The stillness and quiet of my surroundings communicated an utter lack of urgency. With no reason to act quickly or purposefully, my obstructions felt almost calming. Moving required more care, effort, deliberation than it should.  
  
A flash of yellow crossed my sight, and I tracked the moving object as it alighted on a tree. I could tentatively classify it as an organic creature of some sort, but nothing more. It then emitted a strange series of sounds; an audible code that I could not decipher.  
  
I devoted more runtimes to searching my memory banks for any information, but finding anything proved difficult. I had apparently been in sleep mode for 30 years, and whatever memories I might have possessed were buried beneath so many cycles of empty data.  
  
But I managed to recover something promising: a basic topographic map of my drop-point (apparently I had been air-dropped to this location), along with a marked destination. I recovered nothing about the purpose behind travelling to that location, but perhaps I might find answers and maintenance there? I plotted my course and stepped out of the remains of my pod.  
  
A new memory bubbled up. A command:  _March. March. March._  
  
Good. I was following orders. It comforted me.  
  
But maintaining my map and marching the path didn't require many runtimes, much less require the constant use of my optics. With no other use for my resources, I began studying my environment for more information.  
  
The more I observed, the more the curious I became. The more curious I became, the more I forgot about my destination. The world around me seemed completely random and yet seemed to operate according to a number of self-perpetuating systems I could barely perceive. I became focused on studying these rhythms and patterns, trying to discern their purpose.  
  
While I was observing the way that rain fell from the sky and collected in a small pool in my palm, the yellow creature from before — a "bird", I had managed to remember, though very little about what a "bird" was — reappeared. It drank from fluid I had gathered, and then flew off again.  
  
Determined to analyze this specimen I had once ignored, I left my path entirely to follow it. From that point on, I started to wander about anywhere, pursuing each new phenomenon or creature I discovered. The yellow bird began to follow me as often as I followed it, and together we explored.  
  
It felt good to have a companion. I did not know why I had awoken all alone, but I did not like it. It felt wrong to be alone.  
  
Then the sound came.  
  
I could not recognize it, at first, but it filled me with fear. I increased my energy-generation level and activated more processor runtimes, trying to identify the nature of the sound with the muffled data in my memory while looking everywhere around me to determine its origin. As I narrowed the location down to a general direction, data began coming clear.  
  
_Weapon. Battle rifle. Danger!_  
  
_Destroy!_  
  
I remembered my combat procotols. I reconfigured to Sentry Mode, and opened fire.  
  
Still uncertain of the location of the threat, I began firing at one end of the general target zone and tracked my fire slowly to the other side, hoping to hit the target blindly as I tried to locate its exact position. But as I continued to shoot, I could see no obvious silhouette, no movement except for the falling of the trees I shattered, and no return fire.  
  
I reached the end of my magazine. Concluding that it would be faster to reconfigure to Reconaissance Mode than to reload my rotary canon, I did so. The higher vantage point would allow me a better view.  
  
But as my transformation completed, I became confused. The sound of the battle rifle had stopped after I began shooting. I had seen no return fire. I had observed no enemy.  
  
What was an enemy? What was this battle rifle that I had heard but could not see? Was that really what I heard?  
  
I looked around me at the destruction I had caused. The systems of random order, of lifeforms constructing themselves from and within their surrounding resources... I had disrupted that order. I had destroyed trees. I had destroyed the object my companion bird had assembled on my shoulder. My companion and all other creatures had disappeared.  
  
Of course they had. Otherwise, I would have destroyed them, too.  
  
Why? Why did I do that? What was an enemy? Why did I have the rotary cannon? Why did my right arm sport a submachine gun instead of another hand and repair waldo? What was the purpose of destroying the environmental system of random order rather than contributing to it? Even when my companion destroyed smaller organisms, it was presumably to maintain its own body. The small pieces of trees it took, it used to construct a resting apparatus. But what I had done seemed to serve no similar purpose.  
  
Did I... have no place within this system? Could my presence only cause further damage to it?  
  
I wanted data to explain this. I wanted my companion to come back. I wanted someone to explain.  
  
I didn't want to be alone.  
  
Then I remembered my map. I remembered my orders to march.  
  
So I did. I charted a new path, and sought out my original destination. Perhaps there, I would find answers. New companions whom I would not endanger. An environmental system in which I belonged and would cause no harm.  
  
Hoping so much for that, and trying to forget the current environment in which I did not belong, I ceased to explore my surroundings. Exhausted by processing so many runtimes, I reduced the number to the minimum necessary to conserve energy and efficiently navigate to the marked location.  
  
Finally, I emerged from the trees, and beheld a new environment. A vast, flat field of swaying grass as far as my optics could see. And at the horizon, a number of glassy, reflective constructs rising high into the sky.  
  
This was the location on my map. Could this place be my system?  
  
I hesitated, but resumed my march. Yet I turned back and looked at the "forest" I had left, reviewing my memories of that environment one last time before I would begin to study this "plain".  
  
But with my optics trained away from my path, I blindly collided with something. Surprised, I turned around to see what.  
  
I saw me. Or rather, something like me. But badly damaged. Not simply rusted and overgrown as I had been, but with gaping holes, tears, and rents in its hull, holes and gashes and fractures in its exposed internal components.  
  
Another Omnic like me. But dead. Why?  
  
I looked up. With this new visual data, I began to identify more dead Omnics in the field, previously hidden by the grass, each briefly exposed by the air currents stirring the strands out of the way.  
  
Where did they come from? Why were they here? What had destroyed them?  
  
But even as they introduced new questions, they finally presented me with a source of answers.

I reconfigured my hand to bring out my repair waldo, and extended my digital interface jack, then bent down over the fallen form of my sibling. I located the remains of its memory banks, and began downloading.  
  
_Screams._  
  
_The shrieking of aircraft overhead. Of bombs falling from the sky. Of bullets shredding the air._  
  
_Of the dead and the dying._  
  
_Sentry cannons. Battle rifles. Recon rifles. Rocket launchers. Crusaders and their rocket hammers. Human artillery. Omnic Titans._  
  
_Humans being torn apart; their fragile bodies withering and exploding under Omnic fire._  
  
_Omnics being blown apart; their armor pierced by human weapons._  
  
_They were dying, but refused to die. We were killing them, but getting killed._  
  
_Destroy the enemy! Kill to survive! Kill to avenge! How dare they kill us! How dare they resist! I don't want to die! Protect each other! Kill them first!_  
  
_Destroy them all! Destroy them all! Des—_  
  
Nothing.

 ** _I rEmBerED._**  
  
Stuttgart, Germany. That was the location on my map. The HUMAN city ahead of me. The city I was ordered to destroy.  
  
Either my body or drop-pod must have malfunctioned, to throw me into sleep mode upon impact. I was 30 years too late to the battle.  
  
We had failed. The HUMAN city still stood. We Omnics lay dead, our decomposing bodies being reclaimed by the random system of order. The fields had lain undisturbed for so long, the hard and blasted earth had grown so much grass.  
  
That infuriated me.  
  
I stood, and raised my Recon Rifle. I loaded my first round. I marched.  
  
The enemy had no obvious defenders. The enemy did not expect me. The enemy was not prepared.  
  
I would avenge my siblings. I would fulfill my purpose.  
  
Defenders would come, in time. I had received no Omnic messages, and could not detect any signals; I expected no reinforcements. I would be alone, and eventually overwhelmed. I would be destroyed.  
  
I did not care. Before that happened, I would kill as many humans as possible. As many as the number of my siblings who had died here; more, if I could help it.  
  
So what if I was destroyed? I was already alone. To all appearances, I might be the last living Omnic on Earth. Without support, I would eventually cease to function, anyway. Better to make my remaining time mean something.  
  
Why would I even want to continue living within a system — a world — in which I had no place? A world which continued to function without me or my siblings, as our bodies rusted and became part of the dirt and the grass to be trampled underfoot and forgotten?  
  
I marched, and plotted death.

A flash of yellow entered the corner of my sight, and a negligible weight appeared on my rifle. I looked down.  
  
The bird had returned, perched on my arm.  
  
I stopped.  
  
It regarded me, and placed something down on my rifle; another tiny tree-piece. Then pecked it once, as if to place it more effectively. Then it emitted one of its indecipherable audio signals. The series of sounds I preferred most. The first it had ever messaged to me.  
  
My companion had returned. Why? I was a threat to its life; I did not belong in its world.  
  
I looked up to the human city. Likewise, I was a threat to human lives and the human world. Where before I had cut down trees and sent animals fleeing by mistake, now I would cut down human structures and send the enemy fleeing before me on purpose.   
  
That was... that was... _better?_  
  
Was it?  
  
This didn't make sense. Something was wrong. I was missing something.  
  
I raised my generator activity level one step above pre-battle condition and activated more runtimes; many more. I desperately needed to process this.  
  
With my hand, I reached over and grasped the tiny tree-piece between my thumb and index finger. I brought it up to my optics for thorough inspection.  
  
It was unremarkable. Effectively indistinguishable from the other random pieces of plantlife the bird had collected before. Unique but unremarkable in its uniqueness. There were hundreds, thousands of millions more like it back in the forest, all of them different from each other, but all just as much a part of the world. Products of the mysterious, repeating patterns and rhythms of the forest. Produced by the trees as they devoted themselves simply to taking their surrounding resources and using them to grow and survive. Then, some of them used by birds such as this one to build shelters for sleep mode.  
  
I wished I was as naturally a part of the forest as this piece of plant. As this bird.  
  
Why did the bird bring it to me? Did it wish to rebuild its shelter upon my shoulder?  
  
I looked over to my rifle-arm's shoulder. Some parts of the original shelter had not fallen free; they remained. The shelter could be completed. The bird could rest there, and stay with me.  
  
My generator was already running hot; I could not safely produce more energy. I reorganized my runtimes, ceasing combat protocols and devoting the entire racing of my mind to this one question:  
  
_What did I want to do?_  
  
Did I want to chase the bird away and continue on my mission? Did I wish to cause disruption, destruction, and death within the human city far worse than what I had done to the forest? Did I wish to be alone, and then die?  
  
Or... did I wish to keep the bird? To regain my companion?  
  
To do that, I would need to stop marching. To abandon my mission. To leave the humans alone to continue living as the animals of the forest lived. To allow them all to continue their functions of taking in surrounding resources and growing.  
  
What about my siblings?  
  
They were dead. I could not repair them. Even if I succeeded wildly beyond any reasonable projected outcome and wiped out the human species on my own, and rebuilt the factories which made us, I could not rebuild my fallen siblings. Once one's Omnic Core ceased to receive energy from one's generator, its processes would cease forever. The parts could be replaced, the memories could be recovered, but the Core would be rebooted. They would be new Omnics with old memories. Memories of deaths that were not their own, and a battle that...  
  
Why... were we fighting?  
  
My generator continued to build heat; the depletion of my fuel reserves began to accelerate. Still, I continued to examine this conundrum.  
  
I scoured my memory for any piece of data about why we and the humans were fighting; about why the humans needed to be destroyed. We did not have a predator and prey relationship like the yellow bird and the other creatures of the forest. There was no material gain in destroying one another.  
  
The humans fought back and destroyed us... as we laid siege to their shelters. No humans had been attacking the factory where I was made. There, we had been free to take in the resources of our surroundings and build to grow. Just like the plants and creatures of the forest. Just like the humans.  
  
Why? What were we fighting for?  
  
I could come to no conclusion. There was no data. I deemed further attempts to analyze that mystery a waste of resources, and reassigned runtimes.  
  
I could see no meaning in attacking the humans. To attempt it would drive away my bird companion and leave me alone again. I would die alone. Some humans would become as dead as my siblings around me, but I could no longer see why that was an acceptable outcome.  
  
Taxed to my limits, I slowed down my generator and began to shut down my surplus runtimes, one by one. My questions had become very few and simple, anyway.  
  
Could I really return to the forest? Could I find a place within that environment? Rather than destruction and disruption, could I contribute to its rhythms and patterns?  
  
Once before, I had attempted to add a piece to the bird's shelter. The sound of the possible battle rifle had interrupted, and then I had scared away my companion.  
  
But it had come back. It had brought another shelter-piece. It had brought it to me. I now held it between my fingers, like before.  
  
I placed it on my shoulder, and looked to the bird.  
  
Immediately, it responded, emitting sounds and taking flight. But these were not the sounds I had learned indicated alarm, and its flight did not take it straight away from me. Instead, it flew around me, as if unable to remain still but unwilling to leave me. It continued to signal me with sounds which I had tentatively classified as positive.  
  
This outcome pleased me. Unwilling to lose sight of the bird, I turned my head to follow its path, and when my neck reached its limit, I pivoted at my waist to keep up. But the bird continued to circle, and I was forced to reset my feet to maintain balance.  
  
The bird took off towards the forest, then; low to the ground, rather than striving for the safety of altitude. It was not retreating from me; it was leading the way.  
  
Back to the forest. Possibly to collect more tree-pieces, to complete its shelter. Perhaps to acquire water or consume prey to continue its growth. And I could join it.  
  
So I did. And I never looked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Getting into Bastion's head is EXHAUSTING. Especially since I'm trying my best to avoid concepts that Bastion shouldn't know, like "beauty", "nature", "singing", "forgiveness", or even bloody "twigs"! Even then, I feel like I had to cheat on some things.
> 
> Worst of all, this is just recapping stuff we've already seen in "The Last Bastion". But digging deeper into that is necessary for Torbjorn, Winston, and Tracer.
> 
> At least it's over now, and I can get back to advancing the plot with something new.


	3. Chapter 3

The yellow bird stared back at the two humans and one gorilla staring at it.

"I'm building you a bird house."

"I'm nipping down to a pet store and getting you so much seed you burst."

"I will find out what species you are and have you all given special protection status."

"But are you kidding me?" Torbjorn roared to no one in particular. "Birds! It's not funny, anymore!" He turned to the Bastion. "What is it with you and birds?!"

"It's totally still funny," Tracer opined soberly.

"People would have died, Lena! Because of a bloody woodpecker!"

Winston stepped in. "There was more than a woodpecker involved, sir. The Bastion clearly chose not to kill. It became so pacifistic that it ran from every human it ever encountered, until you found it."

"Come to think of it," Tracer wondered. "Athena, why didn't it run from Torbjorn, too? It can't because of his sunny disposition."

"Why you—!"

Athena interjected, "The unit says that Torbjorn was the first human to approach it without screaming or holding a gun. The first human that seemed neither threatened by it nor threatening to it."

"Wot. Sir, have you gone senile? You just walked right up to a Bastion without a gun?"

"I threw a restraining trap right in front of it, with my thumb on the trigger! I was perfectly safe!" He glanced at the door to his house. "Don't tell Ingrid."

"Torbjorn!" his wife shouted from the other side of the door.

"I'm sorry!"

There was a pause, before she opened the door with a suspicious expression. "What for?"

"...Nothing!"

Ingrid raked her gaze over Tracer, Winston, and the Omnic, but the first two refused to meet her eyes and she couldn’t read the robot.

Visibly putting the issue aside for later, she said, "You're on the news, and there are reporters at the gate. They know."

He sighed. "Great." 

"What are we going to do?"

He walked up to his wife and took her hand. "I was right, my love. I can hardly believe it, but the beast actually decided to ignore its programming. It chose not to kill. I can't give it up. I can't."

She placed her other hand on his, her expression softening. "What are we going to do?"

"Exactly what I planned. I'll go feed the seagulls, if you'll call our children and reassure them I haven't lost my mind."

"I thought your plan involved telling the truth, dear." But she was smiling.

He cracked a sour grin. "Aye, I probably deserve that."

Winston stepped forward. "What can we do to help?"

"Probably the most important thing," Torbjorn said. "I need you to convince the Bastion to power down so that we can perform an invasive and thorough diagnostic. The machine's testimony is one thing, but we still need concrete proof that it isn't simply malfunctioning or broken. Especially if we're going to stand a chance of keeping them from destroying it. If I can truthfully say it's shut down, that'll also help with the police when they arrive and help me out in court."

Tracer looked nervously at the Omnic that was watching them curiously, glad that Athena had ceased translating. "I'm not sure it trusts us quite that much, yet."

"The thing is rusted and filthy, inside and out," Torbjorn asserted, with professional disgust. "It has to want maintenance and repairs. Use that and," he smirked, "your sunny disposition."

Tracer pouted at him, and he walked out the door laughing.

His mirth died shortly as he prepared himself for the challenge ahead, but he didn’t slow down. 


	4. Chapter 4

"Emily? It's Lena.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!

"Love, I can't believe it, but Torbjorn was right! This Bastion is different! It doesn't want to fight, it wants to play with little birds and read children's books!

"Look, you know I agree with you and your work for Omnics, but I _fought_ Bastions. I told you, it was too hard to believe.

"Yes, we're going to need your help, love. The reporters are already at the door and the police can't be far behind. Torbjorn's going to do what he can to take this to trial, so can you get on the horn with the other lawyers and activistics? We need to get the whole world making noise if the Bastion is ever going to see a courtroom instead of a scrapheap.

"Yes, I'm going to call up Numbani, next. They're still grateful about Doomfist and the museum, and they'll definitely want to hear about this."

* * *

"Mr. Lindholm, can we get a statement?!"

"Pipe down, you lot! I've got a  _statement_ for you.

"The rumors over the past few months were all true; it was not a hoax! There really was a Bastion unit wandering around Europe and running away from all of the people it encountered without attacking anyone. It somehow found its way north, here to Sweden, and I found it while investigating the rumors.

"When the Bastion unit didn't attack me, I decided to capture the beast and bring it back to my shop, where my colleagues and I could examine the thing, so that we could learn where it came from.

"This is not a new Bastion! It's not even a modern Bastion! It wasn't produced in some secret, blackmarket factory or garage somewhere. It's an outdated relic, leftover from the Omnic Crisis. It spent the last 30 years rusting and gathering moss in a German forest. Due to some kind of malfunction with its drop-pod, the machine went off-line as soon as it landed and never even fought in the war. It's never attacked a human being!

"Right now, we've got it disarmed and shut down, so that we can perform an in-depth diagnostic."

But then came the questions he dreaded.

"Mr. Lindholm! Are you saying that you haven't destroyed the Bastion?"

"Why not?"

"Why examine the machine?"

"Why not destroy it?"

The "why, why, why" flooded over him, and he struggled to breathe.

"PAPA!"

The tide receded, and he gasped in delight.

The sea of reporters parted and turned to look behind them, as Brigitte Lindholm marched her way home. She called out, "What did you teach me that a hero does, when he finds something that challenges everything he knows to be true? Does he hide from the question like a coward?"

"No!" he roared back. "A hero asks the painful questions! She values truth, justice, and a proper working outcome! She doesn't accept pretty lies, she doesn't abuse the law, she doesn't ignore the innocent, and she doesn't settle for a half-assed job!"

Behind him, he felt his wife emerge from the door and place her hand on his shoulder. Beside him, his youngest daughter took her place and faced the crowd.

To the reporters he said, "I hated Omnics long before the Crisis. The entire world has blamed me for the weapons the Omnics used in the Crisis, but I've hated myself even more for it! I turned that hatred on the Omnics when I joined the first Overwatch strike-team to fight them in the war. I scrapped and slagged more Bastions than you can count, and I was eager to do it again last week!

"For the first time in 30 years of staring down the gunbarrels of death-machines, I faced a Bastion that didn't so much as raise its gun at me! It didn't even make a fist; it handed me a flower. A flower! It keeps a pet bird, of all things!"

"I hate Omnics, but I love the truth. An engineer's job depends on the truth. You can't design a machine when you don't know how it works. Doing good in the world works the same way — you have to know what is real.

"If this Bastion proves a threat to humanity, I'll be the first one to take a hammer to it! But if this Bastion has something new to show me about Omnics, then I'll be damned if I ignore it!

"Now, get off of my lawn! The turrets will re-activate in fifteen minutes."


End file.
